[99] Most of these questions were not very difficult to answer; for instance, the following, which is preceded by three introductory stanzas in a very courtly style:-- Mostradme qual es aquel animal, que luego se mueve en los quatro pies, despues se sostiene en solos los tres, despues en los dos va muy mas ygual. Sin ser del especie quadrupedal el curso que hizo despues reytera assi que en los quatro d’aquesta manera fenece el que nace de su natural. Del hombre se halla ser gran enemigo, porque lo hiere do nunca sospecha, y donde mas plaze menos aprovecha tanta ponçoña derrama consigo. Dad vos Señor pues un tal castigo, o de virtudes tal arma que vista, porque alomenos punando resista contra quien tiene tal guerra comigo. [100] The poem commences thus:-- Canta tu, Christiana musa, _La mas que civil batalla_, Que entre voluntad se halla Y Razon, que nos accusa. [101] Nicolas Antonio, whom Dieze follows in his remarks on Velasquez, is the authority for these notices. [102] In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Spanish books were printed in Seville by German printers. At the end of an edition, probably the first, of the proverbs collected by the Marquis of Santillana, (see page 88,) are the following words, which Mayans y Siscar has reprinted:--Aqui se acaben los refranes--imprimidos en la muy noble y leal civdad de Sevilla por Jacobo Comberger, Aleman, año 1508. [103] On this subject Nicolas Antonio’s Bib. Hisp. vet. lib. x. cap. 6. may be compared with Velasquez and Dieze, page 165. [104] To this number they amount in the old folio edition, printed with gothic characters, which forms one of the literary curiosities of the library of Gottingen. Dieze, in his observations on Velasquez, page 177, gives a particular account of this, as well as of the succeeding editions of the _Cancionero general_. [105] With this spiritual composition, the _Cancionero general_ commences. The reader will have enough in the first stanza:-- Enantes, que culpa fuesso cansada, Tu, Virgen benigna, ya yves delante, Tan lexos del crimen y del semejante, Que sola quedaste daquel libertada, &c. [106] This silly conceit, which consists only of eight lines, commences thus:-- La M madre te muestra, La A te manda adorar, &c. [107] The _Ave_ begins thus:-- Ave, preciosa Maria, Que se deve interpretar Trasmontana de la mar, Que los mareantes guia. [108] In the third strophe he thus addresses king Ferdinand:-- Gran señor, los, que creyeron Estas consejeros tales, De sus culmines reales En lo mas hondo cayeron. Si esto contradiran Algunos con ambicion, Testigos se les daran. Uno sera _Roboan_, Hijo del rey Solomon. [109] A new edition of Jorge Manrique’s Coplas, with glosses or poetic paraphrases by various authors, appeared at Madrid in 1779.